Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay: A Novel (Neapolitan Novels, 3)

Those Who Leave is the third book in the author's "Neapolitan Novels" (with the fourth, The Story of the Lost Child, scheduled for publication in the U.S. in September 2015) and it is as gripping and enthralling as the first two. The series is set in a somewhat insular neighborhood of Naples. It is now the late 1960s and 1970s and the two main characters, whose friendship constitutes the center of the books, are now somewhat estranged as their lives have grown complicated and divergent. Still living in Naples, Lina has separated from her husband and is raising her young son while Elena has graduated from college and published a novel. But the actually events of the narrative are not the author's primary concern. Rather, it is the internal life of the two characters and how their own idiosyncratic reactions provide a shape to their stories. In addition to drawing complex characters, Ferrante provides a fascinating portrait of the culture of this slice of Italy during rapidly evolving times. Taken together, the novels are both a coming-of-age story and a coming-into-maturity tale of two diverse women who somehow maintain their own complex, and often convoluted, relationship. I can't remember when I have been so completely taken with a series of novels as I have been with these beautifully written and deeply realized stories, and I am having trouble waiting for the final volume. I recommend Those Who Leave and the two previous books in the series with absolutely no reservations.

Once, when I was a teenager back in the good old 1990's, I was reading Seventeen Magazine and came across a candy-bar ad. The ad was a picture of the candy-bar, and the slogan that it was "totally nuts." In the background there was a lot of text in very fine print. I started reading this text, which was a parody version of a 90's teenage girl rambling on forever about nothing. Phone conversations, clothing descriptions, the word "like" thrown in every tenth word or so. Yet I kept reading the whole thing. I was mesmerized and oddly soothed by the repetitive nothingness of the "story." And then, over halfway through, the story was interrupted by congratulations for making it through such a "nutty" story and offered me a free teeshirt. What does this have to do with Elena Ferrante's novel? The repetitive, almost nothingness of the story through the first three books had a similar feeling for me, and I found myself remembering that ad for the first time in many years. Much as I was compelled to finish the advertisement, I also could not put these books down, and I have now finished the 4th novel. This being said, I do not know if I can honestly describe them as being great storytelling. The protagonist (Lenù) is unlikable and rather selfish and short-sighted. She has enough intelligence to excel in school with a lot of hard work, but she never exhibits her own opinion and keeps trying to act in a way that people will reward with praise rather than have any ideas or presence of her own. But yet she is sympathetic at times as someone trying to be her best self, using education as the means. Lila, the friend, is fascinating, but remains a bit of an enigma throughout the books. I wished many times that we were reading the story from her perspective. But I did read it all, and the two women characters do grow up and hit milestones of life throughout the books, but the pattern that they go through remains the same always as they age. Definitely worth reading if you are a reader of novels. A well written, and a unique kind of story for sure, but kind of like reading a teenage girl's long ramble of her inner consciousness that she is aware someone is going to read one day. But the novel does provide plenty of deeper themes to think about and ponder. Feminism, poverty, the modern era and how it changed society, and yet how things stay the same too. The mid-century Italian setting was interesting and was a great atmosphere to the novels. Perhaps if a free tee-shirt had been offered in the middle of the book, it would have gotten 5 stars from me, but alas that was not the case.

This is Volume 3 of a 4-volume series beginning with "My Brilliant Friend," about two women in post-war Naples who become best friends in childhood and remain heavily involved in each other's lives. In this volume they are adults who have temporarily gone their separate ways, one becoming a writer and the other teaching herself to run a computer business. They fall in and out of love; they give birth; they get involved in politics. The writing is intense and the characters are unforgettable. There is some graphic sexual content. The book was translated from the Italian, including Neapolitan dialect spoken by everyone in "the old neighborhood." The translator handled this masterfully. Thie book and its 3 companions leave most best sellers in the dust.

Great read, especially in the summer. I needed to get this after finishing #2. It arrived before expected.

The Neopolitan series is my favorite book series i love it so much. so good about female friendship, growing up in poverty and patriarchy, misogyny… SO GOOD

イタリアナポリで生きる女性達の人生をしばし共有。強く共感させる筆致で、読書の幸せを感じてます。

Non e un libro facile a capire, pero ha la capacita di farti riffletere, di cercare delle informazioni, di scopriti a te stesso.

Story of staying and leaving and what we consider more important when we have a whole family to leave behind. Which act is exactly called selfish? Will a mother be called selfish if she acts for her happiness or eventually everything can be reasoned with unhappiness in the present situation? This and many more themes underlying this book.

não é um thriller de ação, mas a história toca pelo realismo e profundidade emotiva

Those of you that have followed the fortunes of close friends (and sometimes rivals) Lila and Elena from their childhood - in a rough district of a post-war Naples - will not be disappointed with this impressive third novel. As before, it is told from Elena's point of view with all the honesty, ferocity, emotional fluency and intensity we've come to expect from this extraordinary author. The two women - who are in a psychological sense two halves of the same complex being - are now approaching their thirties. Their fortunes fluctuate. In the first part, while Elena is setting up house in Florence and being feted as a prize-winning novelist, Lila is working in a sausage factory. She is wearing herself out, making herself ill, living with Enzo in a platonic relationship and bringing up her son. She gets caught up in problematic industrial relations at the factory - reflecting wider social concerns - which draws in people from Elena's circle, the Sarratore family, and she is almost broken by the violence of it. Elena arrives from her comfortable, middle-class life in Florence to take care of her and to reconnect. In the latter half of the novel the focus is more on Elena's problematic marriage and progress as a writer. Despite wishing to be a writer first, wife and mother second, with two small two daughters she gets bogged down in domesticity. Her husband puts his academic work first and doesn't fully connect with her; theirs is a more abrasive than a loving marriage, though they have their moments; but Elena becomes stifled by it and she finds writing her second novel difficult. Events for her move to an explosive finale when a figure, a passion, from the past re-enters her life and ignites it. She has to face that most difficult of all dilemmas for a woman - who to put first, one's children or the lover one can't live without? At the heart of this forensic and compelling novel is the complex, multi-layered friendship between the two women. Their differences are increasingly apparent. Lila is rougher, courser but more streetwise, clever and charismatic than Elena, whose intellectual and middleclass aspirations are put to the test. Many of the characters we met in the previous novels - overlapping circles of Neapolitan society - make background or cameo appearances, giving a sense of how the friends and neighbours of the women's childhood expanded into circles of commerce, local power, influence and corruption. Apparently, little is known about the author. One wonders how this is possible in an age where nothing is private any more. It's a brilliant and enthralling novel. (See also the Guardian's Review section for an article on Ferranti, 2 Nov 2014).